Starring: Tom Hanks, Rebecca Williams, Sally Field,
Michael Conner Humphreys, Harold Herthum
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey
Produced by: Wendy Finerman, Steve Tisch, Steve Starkey
Genres: Comedy, Drama and Romance
Running Time: 2 hrs. 22 min.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Paramount Pictures
Academy Awards: Six
Recently someone posted the sound track of movie Forrest Gump on a WXC blog. This brings my memory of the movie again.
I remember when the movie was first released to U.S. major movie theatres, I watched it twice in a row in a single day.
The movie begins with a floating feather on a breeze. The feather was dancing around in the air, unpredictably moving from one place to another, changing directions upon whirlpools and gusts, which reminded me of our life taking accidental-like turns, paths and destinies in time. My gut feeling told me this was going to be a good one; it turned out to be very true.
“Run, Forrest, run!” This memorable yelling toward Forrest was how Forrest started his bond with his child buddy Jenny.
He was a low-witted boy with a single Mom, while she had an alcoholic single Dad who abused her often. They had sympathy for each other and helped each other; they played together and grew up together. Though he had her firmly in his mind as his true love, she often dreamed of things bigger than her life. He let her exploring the world and experimenting her relationships, but he also witnessed her confusion, pain, sadness and failure, which all seemed too difficult for him to comprehend. I wondered if the audience was able to determine whether Forrest was capable of hiding his deeply hurt feelings, or simply he couldn’t feel the pain to the level that we normally would.
Call him a low I.Q. boy, a person with mild retardation or a simple man, with two ill-developed legs at the beginning, but miraculously Forrest ended up being a person full of drama, a successful businessman, and one with a fulfilled life, in a way.
He was the fastest in his high school Football team; he had a chance talking to then president John Kennedy; he was part of the ping-pong team that visited China historically; he was lucky enough not to die in Vietnam as his war buddy did, from whom he learned shrimp business; he didn’t lose his legs as his Lieutenant Dan, who became his business partner after the war. He had a son with his first and only love, and eventually his one true love Jenny came back to him, and died in his arms at the end.
This movie makes you cry and makes you laugh. As someone said, “It’s a sad movie but it makes you laugh all the way.” I watched it many times afterwards, but nothing has changed.
There have been very few movies I would call prefect, but Forrest Gump is one of them.
